In recent days, California governor Gavin Newsom announced that the state is collaborating with the Shasta Indian Nation to transfer over 2,000 acres (just over 800 hectares) in Siskiyou County back to the tribe. A significant moment for the indigenous people, who have been left without land for more than 100 years
California Governor/Facebook
The tribe Shasta it will reclaim land long buried by a reservoir. In fact, as work progresses to remove four dams along the Klamath River – the largest river restoration in American history – not only the habitat and the path of the salmonbut the lands long buried by those waters will soon be reclaimed and returned to the indigenous people who were robbed of it more than 100 years ago.
Five years after the State of California apologized to the Native American peoples, Governor Gavin Newsom has in fact announced support for the restitution of over 800 acres of ancestral land to the Shasta Indian Nation. A restitution that is fully one of the largest in the history of America.
Read also: Victory! Largest dam removal in history saves salmon (and indigenous ancestral lands)
The Shasta Indian Nation is pleased with the Governor’s decision to support the restitution of our ancestral lands and sacred sites. Having access to our ceremonial sites, including the site of our First Salmon Ceremony, is critical to the spiritual and emotional health of our people. The ceremony has not taken place since the land was expropriated for the construction of the Copco Dam over 100 years ago. This represents the beginning of restorative justice for our people, said Janice Crowe, president of the Shasta Indian Nation
The History of the Shasta People
For millennia, the Shasta people have inhabited that region of Northern California that extends from Seiad Valley on the east, surrounded by the Klamath, Scott, and Shasta Rivers, and on the northeast to Jenny Creek and in southern Oregon.
The tribes Kikaceki And Kutarawaxu Of Shasta they lived and worked on the lands surrounding the Klamath River about 35 miles northeast of Yreka. Kikacéki land also includes K’účasčas, a place sacred to members of the tribe around the mouth of Fall Creek.
Their freedom began to crumble with the arrival of settlers and of the gold diggers in the 1850s. Then came farmers, ranchers, loggers and other settlers, amid massacres, forced marriages, rapes and the loss of their lands. As if that wasn’t enough, the narrow valley with the meandering river running along it was also considered a good place to bring electricity to Siskiyou County and other parts of Northern California and Southern Oregon. The people of the small tribe were driven from their homes through expropriation.
There Siskiyou Electric Light and Power Company began building the first dam, Copco No. 1, in 1910. The company was reorganized as the California-Oregon Power Company, or Copco. Between 1910 and 1962, the company built three more dams, all to generate electric service.
Since then the 300-member tribe has been fighting to get back at least some of their ancestral lands. But in addition to the loss of indigenous lands, the dams, one by one, have also proven catastrophic for salmon, trout and other migratory fish.
For decades, tribes along the Klamath have fought their own battle to remove the dams. Efforts then materialized only in 2022 with the entry into force of the agreement on the removal of the dam which paved the way for the largest demolition of dams ever carried out in the nation.
Today, justice is finally served for the Shasta people.
Today is a turning point in the history of the Shasta people – concludes Janice Crowe, president of the Shasta Indian Nation. Now we can return home, return to the culture, return to the ceremonies, and begin to weave a new story for the next generation of Shastas to call our ancestral lands home again.
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